If this thread devolved less into people bitching at one another for having the temerity to post their opinions it might be a little more information dense rather than intellectually dense...

In New Zealand (which is fairly low in iodine and selenium in the soil), unfortunately the highest concentration of iodine available over the counter is 250mcg per drop. I'm currently experimenting with a dosage of around 2mg every couple of days. I was already salting my water with celtic sea salt, and have started taking chelated selenium, but I'm not bothering with the B cofactors beyond what's in the multivitamin I'm also taking.

Annoyingly, I recently found out that the water supply in my city is fluorodated. Largely thanks to the local dental school, no doubt. Which may mean I need to up my dose of iodine to compensate.

I'm finding this thread very useful, although I'll have to admit that some of the posters are occasionally coming off as nuttier than a bag of almonds. And if you find that insulting, it probably just means I'm referring to you.

ps If this post seems a little disjointed and rambling, that would be because it's almost 2am here. And because it is disjointed and rambling, of course...

Sceptic,

Sceptic,
You are correct, the TROLLS are coming out of the woodwork to attack this thread.

Fear not, my friend, you can make your own Lugols 5% iodine using the recipes I have in Iodine References. I have both text recipes and video recipes. It is absurdly easy to make and ends up costing a fraction of buying Lugols from Amazon.Com.

There's actually quite a bit of research (and I mean real scientific research, not forum posts or random websites) that illustrates significant risks from chronically elevated iodine doses. While iodine deficiency is not good either, it's a case where while some is beneficial, more is not necessarily so. I'm concerned when people say things like "well, I take a lot of it and feel fine" because long-term toxicity can take a while to emerge.

I'm not telling people they shouldn't take iodine--I realize that there are reasons to supplement, and I've read some compelling evidence in credible journals for moderate supplementation particularly for those who don't use iodized salt or consume seafood/seaweed regularly. But it is vitally important to be aware that taking too much of something beneficial can become harmful. Long-term high doses of iodine may cause significant and potentially irreversible health problems, including permanent damage to the thyroid.

This well written article contradicts your nonsense:http://www.gabrielcousens.com/LinkCl...language=en-US
If you are looking for contradictory claims about iodine, they are everywhere. No 2 doctors can agree on anything. They can't even agree on what kind of iodine to take. It is up to us to choose a doctor & his protocol to follow.

WHICH DOCTOR'S PROTOCOL DO YOU CHOOSE TO FOLLOW?
Instead of all of this negativism, lets here some positive ideas.

You are the one making reckless claims:
* NO ONE recommends taking 5 bottles of iodine. That is YOU spouting off
* NO ONE recommends "taking daily mega-doses of iodine" Dr. Brownstein recommends only 50mg daily

Grizz

And here we have it - you are recommending that people take the amount recommended by Dr Brownstein - 50 mg daily. Mega dose. Daily.

The recommendations that I have read and feel safe with is no more than 1.1 mg, daily. Or about 7.7 per week. And yes, it is from a Doctor who recommends this.

Forgotmylastusername is making a perfectly valid point - he is not saying people should take 5 bottles of Lugol's each day. He is saying that - IF YOU ARE RIGHT and any excess just moves to urine - then to do that once wouldn't cause harm.

This well written article contradicts your nonsense:http://www.gabrielcousens.com/LinkCl...language=en-US
If you are looking for contradictory claims about iodine, they are everywhere. No 2 doctors can agree on anything. They can't even agree on what kind of iodine to take. It is up to us to choose a doctor & his protocol to follow.

WHICH DOCTOR'S PROTOCOL DO YOU CHOOSE TO FOLLOW?
Instead of all of this negativism, lets here some positive ideas.

Grizz

Owly's post doesn't strike me as nonsense. It is perfectly reasonable and it reflects exactly my concern that long term mega doses could end up being toxic over time.

You ask "Which doctors protocol do you choose to follow" - quite obviously, he DOESN"T choose to follow Dr Brownstein's - any more than I do - and it is absolutely his right to choose not to do so.

You have given many interesting, helpful and useful links to help people to make up their own minds whether to supplement with iodine or not, and if they do, to decide for themselves how much they wish to take. Deciding not to follow your chosen "protocol" isn't getting at you in any way, isn't personal. It is simply exercising freedom of choice.

I am wary of any protocol that would suggest dietary intakes vastly beyond what is found in a normal human diet even in a high-iodine region. You are talking about a dose approximately *fifty times* the suggested daily maximum for most people. Yes, higher doses are used to treat particular conditions such as fibrocystic breast disease (Iodine replacement in fibrocystic disease of the ... [Can J Surg. 1993] - PubMed - NCBI) but high doses do come with risks which are well documented in a sizeable body of peer-reviewed research, some of which I cited above.

I am not opposed to iodine supplements, but I think the Brownstein protocol looks very risky in light of the journal articles I have read examining the risks of high doses of iodine. I am far more confident in the results of numerous controlled studies published in credible journals than I am in one internet doctor's advice.

And you don't just pee out excess iodine. Iodine toxicity is real, and its symptoms can look very much like the "iodine detox" symptoms discussed on this thread. I worry that people are overdosing on iodine and then being led to believe that their symptoms are a sign that they're getting healthier when the "detox" is actually evidence of real harm being done to the body.

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” --Audre Lorde

1) You have pushed the use of ATP Cofactors hard though, presumably because Brownstein does?

2) Exactly. And the Brownstein protocol recommends the highest doses as far as I'm aware.

1) I have not pushed ATP Cofactors. Dr. Brownstein suggests ATP cofactors as a replacement for Vitamin B2 & B3.
You can see all the details in Iodine References, chapter "Taking The Required Supplements" if you care to look.
You can also save money by buying B2 & B3 instead of ATP Cofactors !http://tinyurl.com/iodine-references

2) If you don't like Dr. Brownstein, then what is your recommended alternative?
Do you have anything at all to offer? If not, then stop complaining.

Please do not blame Grizz for making any comments about the Chemtrails. The fault is totally mine. I know that my wife, daughter and I are deficient in Vitamin D3. I choose to believe “anything” that contributes to people being made sick for profit is possible by most of the governments of the world.

What I find strange is that NO one jumped on top of my post regarding the doctors giving me amiodarone which has high doses of iodine in it. Is it because a DOCTOR gave me a high dose Iodine medication without telling me to supplement with selenomethionine that made the high dose of iodine alright???!

Besides radioactive iodine, amiodarone is the most toxic form of iodine one can take. I took it for over eight months and as I said, I later read that it can turn the skin permanently grey. So I stopped taking it on my own. I told my heart doctors the next month that I quit taking it and they just said: “okay”… It has a very LONG half life.

I am NOT saying that ALL doctors are bad. But my belief that most Doctors KNOW all the right answers was blown apart when I had two separate heart attacks. And I was put on amiodarone and many other “medicines” that made me sicker than not taking “them.”

Why did the British government NOT go with dronedarone a newer safer drug than amiodarone?
This being the case, it might be instructive to examine the preliminary decision made by NICE last week to disallow the use of the new antiarrhythmic drug, dronedarone (Multaq, Sanofi-Aventis) for British patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). Dronedarone is a long-awaited drug, painfully developed and tested over a very long period of time, as a potential replacement for the drug amiodarone (which, despite its many drawbacks, is the most commonly prescribed antiarrhythmic drug for AF).
AF is a common heart rhythm disturbance in the elderly and in patients with underlying heart disease. It can cause palpitations, dizziness, poor exercise tolerance and – because blood clots tend to form in fibrillating atria – often leads to stroke. Unfortunately, the antiarrhythmic drugs that are used to treat AF are either incompletely effective, or have potentially dangerous side effects, or both.
Indeed, as a group, antiarrhythmic drugs tend to be only moderately effective, and are toxic and poorly tolerated. Worse, one of the very nasty side effects sported by most antiarrhythmic drugs is the propensity to produce (paradoxically), sudden death from cardiac arrhythmias – a phenomenon we electrophysiologists like to call “proarrhythmia,” since this seems a less unnerving term than “sudden death.”

The reason amiodarone has become the most commonly used antiarrhythmic drug for AF is that it is measurably more effective than any of the other drugs, and better yet, tends not to cause proarrhythmia.

However, if Satan had wanted to invent an antiarrhythmic drug, he would have invented amiodarone. There are at least three features of amiodarone that render it diabolical.

First, as mentioned, the drug is obviously far more effective than other antiarrhythmic drugs, and does not cause proarrhythmia. So on its face, like most entrapping vices, it spins a certain appeal, one that lures doctors into using it far more blithely than they should.

Second, amiodarone has bizarre pharmacokinetics. Before it becomes fully effective, amiodarone needs to completely saturate the tissues of the body. During this “loading period,” which is generally several weeks in duration, large doses are typically used. Once the drug is deemed to be loaded, a relatively small daily maintenance dose can be used. This is because amiodarone is not excreted from the body like most drugs are, by the kidneys or the liver. Instead, amiodarone likes to stay in the cells “forever,” and for practical purposes you get rid of it only through the normal shedding of your body’s cells, such as skin cells and gut cells. This means that once you are loaded with the stuff, it’s a part of you for a long, long time – just about forever. (Amiodarone can still be detected in the blood for at least a year after the last dose.) Once you are on amiodarone, you’re on it.

And third, amiodarone has a unique and disturbing toxicity profile. Because it is stored in essentially every organ of the body, its side effects can affect almost any organ. And because amiodarone continues accumulating in your body as long as you continue taking it, the side effects can develop weeks, months, or even years after you begin the stuff. The side effects of amiodarone are almost too numerous to describe, but some of the more unique ones include:
• Amiodarone commonly causes deposits to form on the cornea – often leading to “halo-vision,” where looking at bright lights at night is like looking at the moon on a foggy evening.
• Amiodarone can cause a very striking and quite disfiguring blue-grey discoloration of the skin, generally in parts of the body exposed to the sun, producing an appearance which has been unkindly termed “Smurf syndrome.”
• Amiodarone often greatly sensitizes the skin to sunlight, so that even trivial exposure can cause a nasty sunburn.
• Amiodarone often causes thyroid disorders, both hypothyroidism (low thyroid) and hyperthyroidism (high thyroid). These thyroid problems are common with amiodarone, can be unusually difficult to recognize and treat, and are often disabling and even dangerous.
• Amiodarone can cause neuropathy of the peripheral nerves, and more disturbingly, significant ataxia (a severe gait disturbance and loss of balance).
• But the most serious side effect of amiodarone is pulmonary toxicity – lung disease. This can take several forms, from an acute respiratory distress syndrome that makes patients desperately ill, requires intensive care, and often results in death, to a more insidious, gradual, unnoticeable, “stiffening” of the lungs that both the doctor and patient can overlook until finally severe and irreversible lung damage is done.
And of course, given the drug’s extremely long excretion period, if any of these side effects should occur (and one or more of them occur in at least 25 – 30% of people who take the drug), you may be living with them (if indeed you remain alive) for quite a whileAmiodarone and NICE - NICE and Amiodarone

Amiodarone (Cordarone, Pacerone): Not FDA-approved for A-Fib. Moderately effective for conversion from A-Fib to normal rhythm, but onset is slow. Good rate slowing in A-Fib. This is usually the last drug tried on patients because of its toxic side effects particularly in the lungs, thyroid, and liver. (Class III drug but it also blocks Sodium Channels like a Class I drug.)

P.S. My next post will be about toothpaste and how it almost put my daughter in the hospital. No theories, no speculation, just the TRUTH plain and simple that altered my view on fluoride in an event of pure terror.

Something that is far reaching for anyone who has fluoride toothpaste in their homes. A safety issue indeed…!

@Grizz: Quick question...I am quite sure you have answered it before. This is the dosage mentioned. Do I need to up all the rest (selenium, magnesium and ester-C) accordingly if I up the iodine? Only ATP co-factors is mentioned.

By the way, thanks for your constant nagging/reminders/preaching in this forum (they stuck with me... you will see how later in my post), and the wonderful job of collating the iodine information. I do do my own research, but I never bother to organize and save them the way like you do. Sometimes I read and I forget (and the links are often lost). I often go through your resources and refresh stuff, I often use that as a jumping point to find more stuff that interests me.

I read about iodine long time ago. And I long suspected that is ONE of the factors of my breast cyst and uterine fibroids. I also believe my diet and lifestyle and personality are contributing factors (another post altogether). I don't get enough iodine even though I'm from an Asian country, as our diets are very Westernized, but just perhaps more than a regular American.

I read about iodine while thinking of ways to treat my fibroids (cos' I don't want any invasive surgeries). There was one time between 10-7 months ago, I tried taking iodoral at 100mg a day. No reaction -- nothing good and nothing bad. I dropped it cos' it was bothersome (became another pill to take).

A few weeks ago after doing another round of research, I chanced upon this thread, I read it with interest. I found your instructions tough, mainly because I don't live in the US, and getting the right co-supplements are difficult. Thus, I usually don't do things to a T. But one day, I decided to just order the stuff from iHerb just to try out the protocol. I figured I gave it a chance.

Long story short. The package took forever to arrive, so I experimented with 12.5mg Iodoral, and some of the stuff that I have. I already have selenium (so that's not a problem), Vit C. I found out that I had B6 (OK, don't scold me, that was the only Vit B I had at the moment -- I was already imagining you lecturing me while I pop them in), and oil of magnesium (I sprayed on myself everywhere liberally). Within 30 mins, I had a reaction... I realized that I was scratching my neck (on my left) unknowingly. Quickly, I stopped myself and looked in the mirror, the lower left part of the neck was pinkish. I realized that it MIGHT be my thyroid reacting. Of course I stopped scratching and sprayed more mag oil and drank tons of salt water. The itch lessen and the pink faded. Then probably between 1 hr to 1.5 hours, I realized that my right side was itching. I looked into the mirror and realized that right side was pinkish and the line that connects to the left and right thyroid was pink too. Somehow I knew that it was working and that my thyroid loved the iodine (with the supplements). I also observed my pee was super brown (and that's even after drinking lots of salt water). My hands and feet are no longer cold. FYI, I had NO reaction when I took 100 mg/day months ago. Through this experiment, I felt that it confirmed that I was iodine deficient.

Anyway, I did that on and off for the last week -- didn't want to overdo it since I my co-factors and mag gylcinate haven't arrived. The good news is I got home just now and found that my package have finally arrived after 2.5 weeks.

Just want to let you know that I taken the recommended dosage! I am confident that I wouldn't die from iodine toxification -- I have once eaten a huge bowl of kelp vegetable soup last week while dosing on 12.5mg/day and doing Lugol's iodine painting on my breasts (cysts are still there but they are no longer painful). Iodine is water soluble, and excess of it is peed out.

Of course, there are other diet, nutritional and lifestyle changes that I've implemented over the last 6 months that helped me tremendously. I have done several detox (liver cleanse) under the watchful eyes of my naturopath/ physiotherapist. Right now, I am confident iodine is one of the critical missing puzzle, and it is the right time to do it as I feel that the detox prepared my body and system to absorb and metabolize the iodine and co-supplements better. The only negative side effect is that I find that my hair is shedding more than I would like to -- which I think it might be the selenium. I wonder if that's a detox reaction.

On reflection, I realized that I was exposing myself to tons of chemicals unknowingly (you will be shocked at the rate I was using household cleaners etc), unhealthy food (fried chicken, ramen, non-organic meats and caffeine) and lifestyle. For instance I had BELIEVED that fluoride is an essential thing for my teeth because that's what my dentist told me and it supported by advertisements. Or how my government justified why it's necessary to have chlorine in the water. I have no reason to question them cos' I trusted them completely and I believed I had better things to do. (Oh by the way, I also believed that margarine and canola oil was better too!). Well of course, look what happened.

The cysts and fibroids are a wake-up call. Even though cysts and fibroids do not necessary mean cancer, the probability of it is enough for me to want reverse it, naturally and holistically. This is just my experience and my journey to reclaim my health. Pure opinion, and no scientific backing behind it. Of course, I am still seeing my regular doctor. They are good for doing ultrasounds and such. In fact I am due for my half-yearly followup this Friday, although it might be too early to see any significant changes from iodine. Some people, including some family members, skeptical and wanted me to go for conventional medical procedure -- an operation. I've checked with the doc on it, she can't guarantee that the fibroids won't grow back. To me, this is NOT solving the root of the problem, it's just merely getting rid of the symptoms.

And here we have it - you are recommending that people take the amount recommended by Dr Brownstein - 50 mg daily. Mega dose. Daily.

The recommendations that I have read and feel safe with is no more than 1.1 mg, daily. Or about 7.7 per week. And yes, it is from a Doctor who recommends this.

Forgotmylastusername is making a perfectly valid point - he is not saying people should take 5 bottles of Lugol's each day. He is saying that - IF YOU ARE RIGHT and any excess just moves to urine - then to do that once wouldn't cause harm.

Personally, I wouldn't bet on that!

What doctor? What is his name & where is the link to his protocol?
What are his required co-supplements?

Yes, everyone knows that I recommend the Dr. Brownstein protocol. So what?
Now give us the details to your doctor & his protocol, and I will list it as an alternative in Iodine References.

I am wary of any protocol that would suggest dietary intakes vastly beyond what is found in a normal human diet even in a high-iodine region. You are talking about a dose approximately *fifty times* the suggested daily maximum for most people. Yes, higher doses are used to treat particular conditions such as fibrocystic breast disease (Iodine replacement in fibrocystic disease of the ... [Can J Surg. 1993] - PubMed - NCBI) but high doses do come with risks which are well documented in a sizeable body of peer-reviewed research, some of which I cited above.

I am not opposed to iodine supplements, but I think the Brownstein protocol looks very risky in light of the journal articles I have read examining the risks of high doses of iodine. I am far more confident in the results of numerous controlled studies published in credible journals than I am in one internet doctor's advice.

And you don't just pee out excess iodine. Iodine toxicity is real, and its symptoms can look very much like the "iodine detox" symptoms discussed on this thread. I worry that people are overdosing on iodine and then being led to believe that their symptoms are a sign that they're getting healthier when the "detox" is actually evidence of real harm being done to the body.

I really wanted to bold all of this post, but time and again ^ this bold part comes into my mind. I must look at the multiple links you provided in a prior post, but for a while now I, too, read about the 'detox' effects listed by some folk and worry/wonder how many might possibly be caused by toxic levels of iodine. I hope other open-minded people discuss this, too.